Cooee (34 page)

By the time we get to this point Sophie is starting to understand that this initiative of hers isn't going down well. Her smile is fading. She pauses and looks at Kate, who tells her to go on.

So. For some time Sophie has harboured this dream that it will be she — and only she — who plays the leading part in reuniting the riven pair, but she hasn't in fact seen how this can be accomplished.

And then she happens to watch a program on television about missing persons. This program makes it blessedly clear that the police are the right people to approach. For how can the police do anything constructive about tracing a missing person if they do not know that the said person is indeed missing? And I have told Sophie quite plainly — haven't I? — that Max is to all intents and purposes a missing person and that I have never instigated a search for him.

So she sallies forth, our Sophie, to the local cop shop. At first, nobody will take much notice: they treat her as if she's a little girl. Not wise, to put Sophie off like this. So she insists, and she gets a toe in the door, and eventually a junior cop — a constable, she thinks — takes her statement.

And, says Sophie, with a faint intonation of triumph, when she says the name of Max Knight, the constable sits up and starts to take an interest.

And, quite quickly really, only a week or so later, she's talking to this very nice man whose name is Mr Pritchard. He's very interested in what she has to say. Very sympathetic.

At this point Sophie halts her narrative and shoots a scared glance at me. She's mostly been looking at the floor, until now. What she sees in my face obviously doesn't reassure her. Her voice trails off and her gaze reverts to the floor.

‘What in Christ's name did you tell Pritchard?' I ask. To my own ears my voice sounds harsh, croaky. Kate glances at me, startled.

It's not hard, to see how it's gone. Frank has clearly been on the ball, has enticed Sophie to chatter away artlessly about her beloved grandmother and her grandmother's perplexing missing spouse. I can imagine it so clearly: Sophie burbling away about the love story she has imagined with such enthusiasm, Frank nodding, smiling, encouraging. A query here, a prompt there. He's a personable-enough man, Frank: he wouldn't have had trouble enlisting Sophie's confidence.

Does her dear old grandmother think Max is dead? he asks. Well, says Sophie; she's so sad about him: she thinks he'll never come back. Of course, he might be dead. But what if he isn't? she asks. What if the cops could find him, and present him to Gandie. Wouldn't she be surprised?

Well, she certainly would.

Christ, Christ, what have I told Sophie? I pull my brains apart trying to reconstruct our conversations.

And Sophie proceeds to remind me, falteringly: she visited me again, and we talked about Max again, the time she showed me the photo she found in her mother's drawer, and this time —
this
time — I told her — didn't I? — that Max was dead. Truly dead. In fact, so dead is Max that he lies in a grave I've visited.

Kate's eyes are on me.

And by this time, of course, Sophie has got the cops looking for a missing person, so she feels a bit guilty to have put them to all this trouble. She thinks she'd better head them off. So she goes back and she tells Pritchard. She tells Pritchard that Max is dead. She tells Pritchard that Gandie knows where Max is buried.

She is starting to snivel.

‘Sophie,' I say, and I still don't recognise my voice. ‘That was a secret. That was our secret. I told you not to tell anyone.'

Sophie responds that I really only told her not to tell her mother. And anyway, she figured I wouldn't want the police wasting their time.

Kate's eyes are wide and hard, and full of consternation and judgement.

‘You're not cross, are you, Gandie?' says Sophie in a small voice.

‘Jesus Christ,' I say, in this voice that isn't mine, that is coming from somewhere outside me. ‘Jesus Christ, Sophie. You little cow. What have you done?'

Sophie flinches, shrinks into herself.

And suddenly Kate is up and at me. ‘She meant well,' she cries, flailing her arms around ineffectually. ‘She meant nothing but good. She did it out of love for you.'

I'm so livid, I can't think of anything to say.

‘Don't be angry with her. She didn't mean to do anything wrong.'

‘Sophie,' I say. ‘Sophie, next time just … just …'

But of course this is an idiotic thing to say, since there won't be a next time. The damage is all done. Sophie glances up at me, her lips quivering. I stare at her and for the first time in my life I find myself regarding my granddaughter without love.

All I can think of is that she has stirred up old muck, long-ago sludge, from the bottom of my pond, that she has muddied the water that I had come to think of as clear and safe. I am no longer safe.

For so many years, I have worked patiently and carefully, constructing protection, devising masks and invisible cloaks and hideaways and shields and God knows what, all designed to maintain my security, and now, on a childish whim, on an ignorant and foolish caprice, she has jeopardised all my travail.

I can't bear it.

Sophie has now gone perfectly white and is staring at the floor. Kate is starting to cry. Trust Kate. She stands, wiping her nose.

‘We'll go now, Mum,' she says. ‘I wanted Sophie to tell you herself what she'd done and she's done that. I know this has been a shock to you, but I think she's been very brave, don't you?'

‘Brave,' I say, hoarse with the absolute horror of it all. ‘Brave. My God.'

Kate yanks Sophie to her feet.

‘I'm sorry, Gandie.'

‘Get out,' I shout. ‘Just get out.'

They do. Kate pauses in the doorway.

‘Are you at home tomorrow morning?' she asks.

‘Why?' I'm not trying to sound encouraging.

‘We need to talk. I'll be over.'

And she is. We sit in my little kitchen and look at each other over the teapot.

‘Mum,' says Kate. ‘Please. You must tell me what happened to Max.'

‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘That man Sophie was put onto, that Pritchard man who visited me: he's the one I once found at your place, isn't he?'

I try to put her off, but she cuts over me.

‘I know he's the same man. Don't snow me. It's important. You know it's important. Mum, we have to talk about this. Has that man been in touch with you? Since Sophie spoke to him, I mean.'

‘No.'

‘When did you last see him?'

‘Years ago.'

‘Do you think he'll come again?'

I try to laugh dryly, but it comes out as an odd rasping sort of noise.

‘I should think so. After what Sophie's told him.'

‘I don't understand any of this, Mum. Tell me about Max. Tell me what happened to him.'

‘Nothing happened to him. We split.'

‘But something did happen,' says Kate. ‘You told Sophie he was dead. You told Sophie you'd seen his grave. You have to tell me. Pritchard's questioned me once already, and I'm sure he'll try again.'

‘What did he ask you?'

‘When I stopped living with you and Max. What my relationship was with him. Things like that.'

‘What did you say?'

‘What could I say? I told him. That is, I told him I stopped living with you when I got married; I told him Max and I got on fine. But it seems to me, Mum, there are things I don't know, and I need to know them if I'm to give the right answers.'

I say nothing.

‘Anyway,' says Kate, ‘I know something's happened to Max.'

‘How can you be so sure? You don't know anything. You can't.'

‘Yes, I can. I do know.'

‘Why?'

‘He's never contacted me,' says Kate, quietly. ‘It's been twelve years since Sophie was born and he's never contacted me. I know he would have.'

‘You know no such thing.'

‘Yes, I do.'

We eye each other.

‘Listen,' says Kate. ‘The way I see it is this. You and Max quarrelled about me, and Sophie, and you split up. Then Max disappeared, and someone reported it, all those years ago, and that man Pritchard was looking for him. And now he's looking for him again.

‘Aren't you surprised by how much interest they're taking in Sophie's story, Mum? She's just a kid. They wouldn't be taking this sort of interest if they didn't think something was seriously wrong. And that wasn't true, what you told me, was it? About Max's business affairs, I mean? They weren't looking for him because of tax stuff, were they?'

‘No. No, it wasn't tax. They were very interested in finding Max, and not because they thought he was just missing. There were big problems, Kate. Big problems.'

‘Tell me,' she says.

Well. She's supposed to be an adult. She might as well know some of it, anyway. I tell her about the photos of Kylie and Lindy Lou, and about their obvious interpretation.

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' says Kate, tears springing to her eyes. ‘Max was a good man. He was a good man, a kind man. He wouldn't do something like that.'

I shrug.

‘Perhaps they were children he was sponsoring. Third-world children, through one of those charity programs,' says Kate, desperately.

I tell her about the gun. I have to say I'm getting a perverse pleasure out of all this. My illusions were splintered to smithereens twelve years ago: why should hers be intact?

‘A gun?' she whispers, her eyes wide.

‘And then there was the heroin trading,' I say, brutally.

Kate can't say anything. She's looking at me in total horror. ‘A drug dealer,' she murmurs to herself, as if I'm not there. ‘Max is a
drug dealer
?'

I consider telling her about the wives, about Meryl, about the serial bigamy, but I don't. Is this due to some vestigial pride, I wonder? If I tell her Max was a born philanderer, it'll make her feel worse, but it'll also diminish my own relationship with him. I don't want to do that. I don't want to tell her that the soppy photographs taken after the ceremony on the beach signify nothing, nothing at all, that we were never married. I can't bear to tell her that.

No, I can't bear that. But an odd thing is happening to me nevertheless. After all these years of silence, all these years when the only person I've ever discussed Max with has been Frank (if you don't count Meryl), it's as if there's a melt within me. I can practically feel the ice crack, the snow soften, the chill streams start to flow. And perhaps Kate knows already. Perhaps she's guessed what happened anyway.

But she is in deep shock. She certainly hadn't guessed anything of what had generated Max's copious funds.

‘How long have you known all this?' she asks.

‘All the time. Since then. Well, some of it only appeared gradually. Say, ten years.'

She shakes her head. ‘Are you
sure
it's all true? Are you quite, quite sure there hasn't been some awful mistake?'

‘Quite sure.'

Kate mulls it over.

‘So where is he?' she asks, suddenly. ‘Tell me, Mum.'

And the melt takes over. I tell her about that evening. I tell her about the meteor stone.

‘It wasn't my fault,' I say. ‘I didn't mean it to happen. It was an accident.'

Kate's eyes are fixed on my face as if there's some invisible mechanism hooking them there.

‘You killed him?' Her voice is so faint, I can hardly hear it.

‘I didn't mean to. It just happened. It wasn't my fault.'

‘You threw the stone at him.'

There is that, of course. In simple terms, in terms of cause and effect, I suppose this is true.

‘But I didn't mean to. I didn't mean it to happen.'

Kate's body contracts into itself, winces away from me. Her eyes have doubled in size.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?' I ask her.

‘You can ask me that?'

‘Kate, I've told you, it was a terrible accident. It must have been one chance in a thousand, one chance in a million even, that the stone would hit him like that, that he would fall like that. It wasn't something I meant to happen.'

‘I left you with my baby. I let you look after my baby, and you had Max's blood on your hands.'

This is a foolishly melodramatic and unhelpful way of looking at things, besides being extremely hurtful, and I tell her just that. She doesn't seem to be listening.

‘I knew something happened. I knew something must have happened. But this — but this! How can I bear it?'